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JAPAN
Nov 23, 2001

Government to seek swift CJD settlement

Health minister Chikara Sakaguchi said Thursday the government will try to reach a quick settlement in two damages suits over Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease contracted from transplants of infected dura mater imported from Germany.
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2001

Government plans to buy up beef distribution stockpiles

The government plans to buy some 13,000 tons of distributors' beef stocks on a temporary basis in line with a rigorous inspection due to begin today on all cows to be processed for human consumption.
JAPAN
Oct 13, 2001

Second mad cow case reported

Initial tests on the brain of a cow that was butchered at Tokyo's central wholesale market indicate it had mad cow disease, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Friday. If confirmed, it would be the second case of the disease in Japan.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 7, 2001

Schools of hard knocks and TV docs

Several of the new fall drama series begin this week, and one of the season's topics is education. Trendy drama mainstay Masakazu Tamura steps out of character as the title character in "Sayonara Ozu Sensei" (Fuji, Tuesday, 9 p.m.), playing the former manager of the New York branch of a major Japanese...
JAPAN
Oct 6, 2001

Firms urged to recall suspect beef products

The health ministry urged the food industry Friday to inspect and voluntarily recall products containing cow parts that could transmit mad cow disease to humans, ministry officials said.
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2001

HIV ruling opens bureaucratic can of worms

The decision Friday by the Tokyo District Court to hand Akihito Matsumura, a former senior health ministry official, a suspended prison term for professional negligence resulting in the death of a patient from AIDS underscores the difficulties in trials involving the criminal liability of bureaucrats....
JAPAN
Sep 6, 2001

Mayors seek help for hibakusha living overseas

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito urged the central government this week to formulate support measures for atomic bomb victims living overseas.
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2001

Ministry to examine risk of eating contaminated whales

The health ministry has decided to examine the health risks associated with consuming contaminated whale meat from small whales captured along Japan's coast, ministry sources said Tuesday.
JAPAN / 50 YEARS SINCE SAN FRANCISCO
Aug 30, 2001

American-style peace redefines Japanese palate

Fortunately, the GIs had something in their pockets and backpacks that led to instant friendship with total strangers: the Hershey chocolate bar.
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2001

Options over last rites sought

When a citizens' group scattered human ashes at sea 10 years ago, they revived a burial practice unseen in Japan for more than 400 years.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2001

Legalization: The drug war's best weapon

LONDON -- In Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland it is practically impossible to get arrested for buying or using "soft drugs." In the Netherlands, users may buy up to five grams of cannabis or hashish for private use at 1,500 licensed "coffee shops," and they are opening two drive-through outlets...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 22, 2001

Breaking up (all that fat) is so very hard to do

While my stomach is not particularly gregarious, neither would one call it meek.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 12, 2001

Tokai nuke incident still shows afterglow

Hisashi Ouchi died Dec. 21, 1999, less than three months after he and two colleagues set off a criticality accident at JCO Co. in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture. Masato Shinohara died seven months later, also a victim of lethal radiation exposure. The third employee, Yutaka Yokokawa, was hospitalized...
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2001

Transplant chief 'subsidized' founders

The head of Japan Organ Transplant Network, the nation's sole coordinator of organ transplants, gave 70 million yen to a professor and a hospital director who helped establish the network in 1997, according to sources familiar with the case.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 2001

School, parents hold talks after killings

OSAKA — Ikeda Elementary School, where eight pupils were stabbed to death Friday by a knife-wielding man, began an explanatory meeting for parents Saturday afternoon.
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2001

Sick building chemical haunts recently built homes

About 37 percent of homes built four to five years ago have a higher concentration of a chemical that apparently causes the so-called sick building syndrome, according to the results of a study conducted by the Infrastructure Ministry.
COMMENTARY / World
May 31, 2001

Smokers' deadly paradise

For Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Hal Boyle, it wasn't too difficult to tell a man from a woman. "If it always offers you a cigar, it's a man," he quipped. "If it always is asking for a cigarette, then waits for a light, it's a woman."
JAPAN
May 21, 2001

Survey finds hospice care in short supply

The number of hospice facilities for terminally ill cancer patients in Japan remains far smaller than the demand, covering only 1.8 percent of cancer patients who died in this country in 1999, it was learned Sunday.
JAPAN
May 12, 2001

Hansen's patients hope for dignity in society's eyes

Former patients of Hansen's disease are hoping their fight to restore the human rights they have long been deprived of will build public awareness and eventually lead to the creation of a society in which no one's dignity is denied.
EDITORIALS
May 9, 2001

WHO takes on the tobacco lobby

Tobacco causes 4 million deaths each year -- one life every eight seconds. Unless action is taken, that number is expected to grow to 10 million by 2030. Government representatives convened in Geneva last week under the auspices of the World Health Organization to resume discussion on the world's first...
ENVIRONMENT
Apr 5, 2001

Soy may protect women against Alzheimer's

SAN DIEGO -- Soy may help protect against the onset of Alzheimer's disease, especially in postmenopausal women, according to research presented Tuesday at the 221st national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 28, 2001

Cash, traditions standing between elderly and proper care

For 61-year-old Nayako Yamaguchi, taking care of her 66-year-old sister, Etsuko, is a job she does 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 6, 2001

Two perspectives on a gray tomorrow

CARING FOR THE ELDERLY IN JAPAN AND THE U.S.: Practices and Policies, edited by Susan Orpett Long. Routledge: London, 2000. 358 pp., $100. By the year 2025, some 26 percent of Japan's population will be over 65 years old, meaning that society and families will need to cope with the various needs of...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 23, 2001

India's census will only confirm the obvious: the nation is overpopulated

The ongoing census in India, the sixth since its independence in 1947, is bound to unfold an ocean of data, perhaps bewildering to an outsider given the country's complex social and caste divisions.
EDITORIALS
Jan 10, 2001

Behind the quest for more babies

The continuing precipitous decline in Japan's birthrate -- in 1999 it was at the all-time low of 1.34 births per woman during her lifetime -- has long troubled planners in both the government and the private sector. Now Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has put himself at the center of the issue by calling...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2001

Evidence of exam leak destroyed

Investigators suspect an executive of Ohu University in Fukushima Prefecture instructed school officials to destroy papers related to a leaked exam immediately after the incident came to light, police sources said Tuesday.
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Dec 28, 2000

May you all live long and prosper -- kanpai!

Happy Holidays to all Japan Times readers.
COMMUNITY
Nov 9, 2000

Smoke gets in your eyes

A scar on her arm reminds Kyoko Saito (not her real name) of an unpleasant experience she had a month ago. The Tokyo office worker was hurrying home one night after working three hours overtime, when she overtook three men chatting as they sauntered along the crowded sidewalk to the nearby station.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past